Visitors to a new outdoor space near Montgomery can learn about slavery through art. The Equal Justice Initiative’s Freedom Monument Sculpture Park covers seventeen acres along the Alabama River. The art includes what’s called the National Monument to Freedom. It’s a wall standing over forty feet tall and more than one hundred and fifty feet in length. EJI Director Bryan Stevenson says the wall contains the names of over one hundred thousand former slaves recognized for the first time during the U.S. Census of 1870.
“I think, nationally, we haven't done a great job of presenting the history of slavery in a way that focuses on the lives of enslaved people. Freedom Monument Sculpture Park hopes to change that,” said Stevenson.
The site of the park on the banks of the Alabama River is nestled between rail lines built by enslaved people in the 1800’s. Around the history of slavery, the slave population of Alabama grew from forty thousand people in 1820, to four hundred thousand. Stevenson says that by 1860, the State had one of the largest populations of enslaved people in the country, whose experience is reflected in the art.
“One of the big sculptures is a wall of death masks that honors the 10 million people who were enslaved in America and reading about that number and the aspects of that experience,” he said. “And then seeing these maps, I just think, allows you to have a deeper appreciation of the art.”
Stevenson says a lot of people come to Montgomery to visit the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. He felt there weren’t honest places in in America about the history of slavery and the legacy of slavery as there needs to be. The Freedom Monument Sculpture Park also includes nearly two hundred year old dwellings from cotton plantations, as well as rail cars and holding pens associated with the slave trade.
